Saturday, March 29, 2014

We are grateful for the $25,000 directed gift from the Northwest Sarcoma Foundation that facilitates Seattle-Portland collaboration in the genetic and functional characterization of adult bone and soft tissue sarcomas. This is the second year of this program, which supports collaboration between our laboratory and Dr. Robin Jones at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

We are grateful to the SARC SPORE pilot grants program which has awarded a 2nd year of funding to our collaboration with Dave Langenau's lab at MGH evaluating myodifferentiation therapies for rhabdomyosarcoma.

Lab alumnist Tohru Hosoyama has recently published a very nice study entitled, "Derivation of Myogenic Progenitors Directly From Human Pluripotent Stem Cells Using a Sphere-Based Culture" in the journal, Stem Cells Translational Medicine. This is work from Tohru's second postdoctoral fellowship with mentor Dr. Masatoshi Suzuki. Tohru is now an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Surgery and Clinical Sciences, Yamaguchi University, Japan. It has always been a pleasure to follow Tohru's work, which is both innovative and impactful.

Friday, March 14, 2014

The community owes a great thanks to David Arons and his team at the National Brain Tumor Society who yesterday held the 2nd working group meeting on "Key Issues in Pediatric Brain Tumor Research: Availability of Drugs for Pediatric Brain Tumor and Pediatric Cancer Research". This meeting brought together academics, the Children's Oncology Group leadership, pharmaceutical stakeholders and members of the advocacy community - and it is hoped that specific improvement outcomes will result.

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a community resource for families

You Can Participate in our Novel Therapeutics Studies !

One would like to think that tangibly better treatments for rhabdomyosarcoma, medulloblastoma and other childhood cancers can be found in a matter of years, instead of tens of years. Finding new treatments starts with research, perhaps even a new research approach to identifying effective new treatments. The Children's Cancer Therapy Development Institutefocuses on finding molecules in childhood cancers that can be directly turned off or on by drugs so that the tumor stops growing. Behind our novel approach is the use of genetically-engineered mice. Our Pediatric Preclinical Testing Initiative uses mice modified from before birth so that at a certain age, and in a certain tissue, the same mutations found in a child’s cancer are activated in the mouse. These special mouse models of childhood cancer can be used to test a treatment to see whether the tumor growth and spread (metastasis) can be reversed. The specific aspect of these mice having normal immune systems is a real plus, too, because white blood cells play an important role in how tumors evolve and respond to therapy.

Our program is designed around community participation. Through the Children's Cancer Therapy Development Institute, you can contribute directly to this grass-roots initiative. Donations through small gifts or grants will assist in studying compounds that may be effective in treating such childhood cancers as alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma, or medulloblastoma (the alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma model was featured by Dr. Keller's long time collaborator and former mentor, 2007 Nobel laureate Mario Capecchi, in his Nobel Prize lecture {see 16 minutes onward}.)

For additional information regarding supporting this program please contact Charles Keller at charles@cc-tdi.org. Results obtained through these studies will be shared with the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program, as well as the Children’s Oncology Group, which designs clinical trials for childhood cancer.